Tuesday, 25 May 2010

SPADES & HOES & PLOWS is the third solo album by Welsh producer, pianist and songwriter David Wrench, and was commissioned for Julian Cope's Black Sheep by Cope and Fat Paul. The album presents four traditional folk themes from the British Isles, all performed in an eerily upfront and cadaverous manner, reminiscent of such late black metal as Furze, or perhaps a radical hybrid of Andrew King and an acoustic Khanate. But this is hardly a radical new course for Wrench, whose obsessions with cultural marginalia began as long ago as the late 80s with Nid Madagascar, his Welsh language acid house band. In 1997, Wrench released the turbulent BLOW WINDS BLOW, a dark set of songs influenced by Peter Hammill and John Cale. As the co-leader of the short-lived glam-sleaze duo Bubblegun, Wrench grabbed the ear of Julian Cope, whose particularly enjoyed the earnest electro-ballad ‘Beautiful Cunt’. David Wrench’s next solo album was THE ATOMIC WORLD OF TOMORROW, a horny melange of politically charged hi-energy synth pop. As an Engineer/Producer and Mixer, he has recently worked with Caribou, mixing most of the new album Swim, and previous album ANDORRA, engineering the Mercury prize nominated TWO SUNS by Bat For Lashes, WHEN THE HAAR ROLLS IN by James Yorkston, and producing the critically acclaimed albums GOODBYE FALKENBURG by Race Horses, GOTHIC ROAD by Jackie Leven, MIRACLE INN and BORE DA by Euros Childs, and THE QUICKENIG by Kathryn Williams. He recently was awarded the BBC Radio Cymru C2 award of Producer of the Year for the 3rd time. He joined Julian Cope’s group Black Sheep in 2008, performing vocals on their 2009 album KISS MY SWEET APOCALYPSE 2.